How Unconscious Decisions Shape Your Life & How to Break Free

Nick Urban [00:00:01]:
You’re listening to High Performance Longevity. The show exploring a better path to optimal health for those daring to live as an outlier in a world of averages. I’m your host, Nick Urban, bioharmonizer, performance coach, and lifelong student of both modern science and ancestral wisdom. Each week we decode the tools, tactics and timeless principles to help you optimize your mind, body and personal performance span things you won’t find on Google or in your AI tool of choice. From cutting edge biohacks to grounded lifestyle practices, you’ll walk away with actionable insights to look, feel and perform at your best across all of life’s domains. Will welcome to the podcast, Nick.

Will Steel [00:00:53]:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Nick Urban [00:00:54]:
You have a phrase that when I came across it, it stopped me in my tracks, and that is that you’re unidentified past decisions limit what’s possible for you. What do you mean by that?

Will Steel [00:01:05]:
Yeah, well, you know, how many thoughts do you have in a day? You have thousands and thousands of thoughts in a day. Now when you’re growing up and things happen, people look back and go, I was traumatized. My dad left when I was five. And you know, people say things like that. What I’m saying is that it’s not that that happened, whatever that was, it’s at the time you made some decisions. And typically it’s make decisions about yourself, make it mean something. Oh, my dad doesn’t love me. I’m unlovable maybe, right? Make it mean decision.

Will Steel [00:01:40]:
You make decisions about other people. You know, my dad doesn’t love me, then nobody loves me. I’m on my own in life. Well, actually a decision about yourself there, right? And then a decision about life. Now, I’m not saying you say all three, but those are the kind of areas where I inquire with people. And you have that thought and then it just goes into the background and you don’t realize it. But that’s now like you now got a radar to find evidence for what you just decided. And you’ll find evidence.

Will Steel [00:02:13]:
And because you think, let’s say, I’m not lovable, you behave a certain way when you’re interacting with life, with people. And that behavior actually causes people to react to you and things to happen to you that, you know what that reinforces that thing that I thought, see, look, people don’t actually like me. And now your behavior is even more tuned in and you produce more and more results like that. And, you know, you’re locked in. You’re caught in a loop. You’re caught in a behavior Loop and a perception loop and all the evidence lines up and you live your whole life like, you know, without thinking about it. That’s just the way it is. I’m, you know, people, you know, unless they get to know me, people don’t like me.

Will Steel [00:03:02]:
You know, you’ve got your. It’s all explained out like it’s just the way it is. And you don’t realize that’s a limiting belief. Even if the belief has, you produce great results. Like, you know, I decided I’m not academic. I’m not an academic person, but I can work hard, and I’m going to work hard to get the results. And I did. And I got a degree in electronic engineering.

Will Steel [00:03:25]:
And I remember my brother saying, God, you’re so brainy. And I’m thinking to myself, I just worked hard like it, couldn’t own it. In fact, the result reinforced the belief and the experience of feeling like I’m not actually smart, you know, so you’ve got these running all the time. There’s lots of them. And I mean, I wrote my book to try and get people free of all of that and all the different ways that it happens. I do like this because it’s like you’re living in a box, but it’s a multifaceted box. It’s like lots of different limitations to who you relate to yourself as. So you’re in a constrained container.

Will Steel [00:04:14]:
And, you know, some of those, some of those walls to that container are pretty good. You know, I’m strong at this, I’m not good at that. And it’s, it’s all what you identify with as you. So the, the book is about taking that off and taking that off and taking that off until there are no constraints. Now it’s moving it from a theory and an understanding to actually living it in life. That’s the trick. And so I put lots of exercise on every chapter so people can actually do the exercises and have conversations with people in their lives and get things straightened out and sorted out. And then, boom, you know, it just opens up your world.

Will Steel [00:04:58]:
So in answer to your question, you know, that, that, that, that we are constrained without realizing we’re constrained.

Nick Urban [00:05:03]:
So what happens is there’s a thought, you’re not aware of the thought, and then you start aligning your actions and behaviors and your feelings based on that thought. And as a result, that starts occurring more in your life. And then that’s like a self comes a self fulfilling negative prophecy that makes more of what you don’t want, what actually occurs and becomes More prevalent in your reality.

Will Steel [00:05:29]:
Yep, yep, yep. It is quite simple, but it’s so trapping when you’re in it.

Nick Urban [00:05:35]:
And if that’s just one example, and there’s a lot of thoughts, a lot of negative thoughts every single day, you can see how very quickly this would start to layer up and create that invisible cage, if you will. Obviously, one of the first steps should be to reduce the number of new limitations that we’re creating on ourselves. How do we actually go about auditing and finding these as they arise, or perhaps even before they arise so we can stop them from occurring in the first place?

Will Steel [00:06:03]:
That’s a good question. Well, the first thing is to try to get, get, get the main ones, the ones that are running you right now in this moment, or with what you’re challenged with right now. So, you know, if you’re challenged with, you know, you’re not getting promoted, let’s say, in your work, right? And you keep getting. Someone else keeps getting the promotion, Someone else keeps getting. You keep getting overlooked, right? So you gotta look, okay, what is it about me? There’s something. Because I, I know I can do that job, but there’s something that is having people not want me for that job. But that’s what we call a blind spot, or that’s something hidden from your view. You can’t see, but there’s something going on with you.

Will Steel [00:06:49]:
We have to get to. We have to get to. What’s that about? What’s that about? What is it they say when they don’t give you the job? You know, so we get to unpick it. It’s like, it’s like you’re wrapped up in something. We’ve got to unpick it like that. Now, once you start doing this work and you start seeing things, you go, wow, that’s unbelievable. You start catching yourself having a thought. So I give you a very fun example, right? One of my beliefs that was in the background that’s, you know, that it’s.

Will Steel [00:07:22]:
The fabric of it is still there, the structure of it is still there, like in the body sensations. And it’s kind of locked in your body and you release a lot of it, but it’s kind of still there waiting to get you if you’re not paying attention. So when I was three years old, my dad told a story to the whole family about how I came along. And he said, you know, we couldn’t afford a third baby. Then mum got pregnant and we thought, well, we’ve got two boys already. Be nice to have a little girl this time. So we’re looking forward to little girl. And you popped out.

Will Steel [00:07:52]:
You should have been a little girl. Everyone’s laughing except me, because what I’m hearing, where I’m making that mean in that moment is they didn’t want me. They really didn’t want me because they wanted a girl. And I have this thought, right, I’m the best. So now my life is about proving I’m the best. And even if I was the best and I got ribbons that said it never fixed something, a feeling inside, it never fixed it. In fact, it’s like, ah. And I kept going for bigger and bigger things because obviously, you know, if I can prove I’m the best, that somehow fixes something that I’m not even aware of, it’s just gonna.

Will Steel [00:08:29]:
It’s just, it. It’s, you know, that was my life. Now I know all that and I know that and distinguish that. There I am at my neighbors with my little dog, Bubbles, and the kids are all playing with the dog. She’s loving it. She’s getting treats, she’s getting attention. I go, bubbles, come here. And normally she comes straight to me and she pretends to not hear me.

Will Steel [00:08:53]:
She’s like, really having such a good time, you know, And I’m going, bubbles. And she’s literally ignoring me. And I start having these feelings and these thoughts come in. Oh, like a sinking feeling. And a thoughts like, God, See, dogs, they don’t really love you. They just, you know, whoever feeds them or give them attention, that’s it. You know, I’m not really that important. I’m not really shouldn’t really.

Will Steel [00:09:15]:
And I catch myself. Whoa, wait. Gosh, I’m even doing it with my dog. Oh, man, I’m going into. I’m not wanted with my dog, for crying out loud. It’s like. And I caught it. And the moment I caught it, I’m like, I could talk about it.

Will Steel [00:09:31]:
I can laugh about it. It’s like a joke. It’s crazy. But it was really going real for a moment. It was starting to go down that, that path. So that’s how once you get kind of familiar with it, once you start to see it, you can actually catch it and get the absurdity of these things.

Nick Urban [00:09:50]:
Your situation is interesting because I think a lot of people would argue that high achieving and striving to be in that realm is noble and it’s a good goal. At the same time, if it’s coming out of a place of like, fear or like, lack of whatever that might make it Different. And also there are the downsides of that it makes relaxation and enjoying other things harder, of course. But let’s go back to your story. If you went into that situation with your current awareness, of course you’re going to recognize that you’re having those thoughts and that where it stems from, et cetera, et cetera. But years or decades ago, perhaps you weren’t aware of that. You had those thoughts and they dictated your future behavior. How do you go about actually catching yourself when you’re having those thoughts and deciding, oh, you know what? This is that loop again.

Nick Urban [00:10:43]:
Interesting. Look at that. I’m in that loop.

Will Steel [00:10:46]:
I wouldn’t have been able to because I was totally unaware of it. So it’s having engaged in that inquiry to get to see that, which was a surprise. It wasn’t like I was looking for, why am I so competitive? I didn’t even think about it. It just came to me, this memory of my dad saying what he said and the feeling of upset. But because I’d engaged in this, you know, this what happens. And then there’s what we make it mean. I’m like, looking at this. This memory’s coming up and I’m going, oh, oh.

Will Steel [00:11:21]:
That’s the realization, because I’m seeing what I’m saying and what I understood that to be. But then I’m seeing. But that’s not what. That’s not what happened. It didn’t say we didn’t want you. He didn’t say that. But. But the moment you see that, it’s like, it’s.

Will Steel [00:11:40]:
It’s quite emotional. You know, there’s all this suppressed emotion and upset, and it all comes out, and it’s an actual experience. Something happens to you. You are opened up from that moment. So. So for people who have not done that work and that work’s ongoing, I could give you a tip. People want tips, but it’s. It doesn’t work that way.

Will Steel [00:12:03]:
It takes sitting in the conversation, it takes inquiring, it takes looking. And these things rise up, you know? You know, I work, I coach, I coach entrepreneurs, right? Mostly. Mostly entrepreneurs is what I coach. And sometimes they just want to fix something. And it’ll take, you know, probably take a couple of months. Can we just do that? I said, no. I don’t work with anybody for less than 12 months because I’m really not really a coach. I’m a.

Will Steel [00:12:29]:
I’m a facilitator. I’m an ontological. I don’t know, what’s the word? Yeah, facilitator. Really so we’re going to work together for 12.

Nick Urban [00:12:43]:
What is ontological?

Will Steel [00:12:44]:
Ontological. Ontology is the study of being. So you’re a human being. So I’m not interested in the being of a mountain. I mean, it’s quite nice and it has a being, right? It speaks to you. But then there’s human being and being. And if I said to you, who are you being right now? You’re like, what? I have no idea. Yeah, you can’t see it, you can’t see yourself, but you can see the guy over there being an idiot or being, you know, provocative or being, you know, an upset five year old cause he’s not getting someone to move out of the parking space.

Will Steel [00:13:27]:
But when you’re in the middle of it, you don’t see who you’re being. So you don’t re. You don’t have an access to being. So that takes an ontological inquiry or a Socratic inquiry if you’re asking questions, but the questions don’t have a yes, no answer or it’s a this, you know, it’s like, that’s interesting, you know, if I was to say to you, you know, you know, what, what, when are you fulfilled? What is fulfillment to you? Right? And that today it can be one answer. But you wake up tomorrow going, no, you don’t. No, no, no, it’s this or what? You know, what is love? You know, well, people got all sorts of theories about love and they can write poems about love and they can sing songs about love, but that’s not love. There’s love, you know, so, you know, Socrates had, he would have inquiries with people, you know, what is good, what is good and where is good? You can’t touch it. I mean, where is it? Or beauty.

Will Steel [00:14:34]:
What is beauty? So these but these, but by engaging in this kind of conversation, you get an access to being. I can see in a convers. Oh, oh God. Wait, wait. I’m just being right right now. I’m just having to be right. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I let that go. It’s totally valid what you’re saying.

Will Steel [00:14:56]:
I have another view and you have that view. They’re both, they’re both possible views. I’m giving up being right, okay, Sorry. Because if you end up arguing and I spent my life arguing, you know, as a kid, that’s what we did. Me and my best friend, he’s, he’s half Irish and I thought I was quarter Irish. I’ve recently found out I’m not even quarter Irish because my granddad was actually adopted. We just argued about everything. And I just thought, that’s the way I am.

Will Steel [00:15:26]:
I’m just, you know, he says one thing and I’ll be automatically Deva’s advocate, and then I’ll argue for that. But because it’s about this humanness, this human automatic to have to be right. We don’t like being wrong. Being wrong is like dying. You can’t be wrong. So. So ontology is the study of all of that, you know, what has you. You know, be afraid of something, you know, what has you.

Will Steel [00:15:58]:
No, I don’t like that. It’s more like, you know, if you go to psychology, you’ll get an explanation and you end up sort of really a victim of this phenomenon that you are, you know, or you’ve got, or this condition, whereas beings not about that. Ontology is about, well, who you being right now. What do you mean? Well. Oh, you’re angry. Okay, that’s interesting. You’re being angry right now. Yeah.

Will Steel [00:16:28]:
And you think that’s you? No, there’s anger. See, I can have all this anger. Wow. I can’t believe it. I’m experiencing all this anger right now. I’m really like, wow. But it’s not me. It’s just what’s there.

Will Steel [00:16:48]:
And when you identify with the anger, it’s, I’m angry versus I have anger. I’m aware that what I’m saying might not be connecting with you or answering your question to your satisfaction. Okay. It’s very hard to answer that question.

Nick Urban [00:17:05]:
No, I get it, actually. And it’s interesting that certain languages, they don’t say I am this or that, it’s I have this or that, because it’s actually like, as you’re saying, in a way, a lot more accurate. And it seems to me like one of the exercises here is to go through life and to observe yourself. It’s like a meta awareness of what’s going on and the internal reactions that’s causing in you. It’s like, okay, I’m feeling happy or sad as a result of this.

Will Steel [00:17:36]:
Huh?

Nick Urban [00:17:36]:
Why is my state shifting because of this or that? There’s probably something there. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. But by being inquisitive and thinking about it, then I can decide if it’s something I want to explore or if I’m happy, just like, letting it be. But either way, it’s having that awareness. Like, you could put other people in that same exact situation and they wouldn’t be angry, they wouldn’t feel this or that. And because other people would have different experiences. It means it’s not universal. And it has something to do with you, your personality, your upbringing, all that stuff.

Nick Urban [00:18:06]:
And I also believe that personality is largely shaped by upbringing. And when we become aware of different aspects of our personality, they can change.

Will Steel [00:18:15]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s good. Very good. You know, I remember I was working with a guy. I was leading the program in London, I think it was London. And this guy was. He was in a bad way, man. He’s like, you know, not quite suicidal, but like, what’s the point of living? You know? And I said, well, what’s the thing, man? What? What is it? He said, I’m just depressed.

Will Steel [00:18:39]:
I can’t. You know, I just. Why me? I’m just depressed. I said, well, okay, let’s address your language, because it’s all in language. I am depressed is different to I have depression. And I wrote it on the board on a big whiteboard, right? So I wrote it. I’m depressed versus I have depression. I said, what’s the difference between the two? I said, well, no, they’re the same.

Will Steel [00:19:08]:
No, no, no. What’s the difference between I’m depressed and I have depression? It took a while, but finally got, oh, I’m not depressed. I’m not like the depression. I’m not depressed. I just have it. Yeah, I’m not kidding. I know. I swore.

Will Steel [00:19:31]:
Then it altered. This guy’s. Everything rearranged. He’s like his whole molecules rearranged. And he was like, I mean, I’m okay. Yeah, you just got. You. You have, like that.

Will Steel [00:19:46]:
Those feelings in your gut. You have that now. If somebody’s listening in and they’re, you know, severely suffering from depression, I don’t want to mitigate that or minimize that. I’m saying I got this guy to get the difference, and he altered completely. Yes. He’s got these feelings. It’s like he got a bad stomach. Okay.

Will Steel [00:20:10]:
But it was like. It was, like, lit up. Wow. I’m okay. And I have. I’ve got depression depression symptoms. Yeah, but I’m okay. Yeah, that’s right.

Will Steel [00:20:24]:
Okay, buddy, Done. You know, I’m going to shorten that down. That was quite a long interaction, but it was. It’s life. Alter it.

Nick Urban [00:20:33]:
That’s a really good one. It’s a really easy one to spot. I am versus I have language. Are there other shifts like that? Because, I mean, I was learning about holistic health, and we were talking about, like, I am sick, I am heartbroken, I am this. And when you say, Those things over time, you tend, like, statistically significantly have more issues with those organs that are correlated with the phrase itself. I am heartbroken. Down the line, you’ll have heart issues. If you don’t work on that.

Nick Urban [00:21:05]:
I am sick to my stomach, you’ll have stomach issues, stomach disorders, digestive disorders. And that’s probably linking like the I am part to that. If I have heartbreak, I have stomach issues. It might not still be the best language to use, but it’s probably better than using IM still. Are there other areas outside of I am versus I have that we should be applying this.

Will Steel [00:21:28]:
Yeah, well, look, if you’ve got a sore throat. If I got a sore throat. I used to hate getting a sore throat when I was a leader and I was in a. What do you call it? A body of leaders, right. So if you got sick, you had to get on the phone with your coach and go, okay, what’s that about? You know, so if I had a sore throat, I knew. I know there’s something I’m not saying. I’m not communicating and I need, like I’ve got something I want to communicate and I’m not, I’m. I’m suppressing it.

Will Steel [00:22:00]:
I’m upset about something and I’m not saying it, you know, and I’ve got it stuck in my throat. And the moment you get to it and you communicate it, it’s amazing. Your throat gets better, at least 90% better. You may still have to take, you know, drink lots of water and to treat the symptoms, but the source of it is out and now you’re okay. So, you know when you said sick to your stomach and you get sick to your stomach? Yeah, that’s, you know, if there’s some situation and you, God, I’m just sick of this. I’m sick of it. And you get sick. So you start to get mindful about what you’re actually saying, saying to yourself and saying out loud, because the body is listening.

Will Steel [00:22:45]:
We know we talked about being earlier. You could say your body has being. So those beings are listening and we might get a bit woo woo and all of that right now, but you can actually. I worked with a guy called Randy McNamara and if I got sick and I talked to him, he’d have me talking like, I got a bad, bad. I sprained my ankle one day. I was running along the beach and I just ran into what was not a rock. It was like a bag of sand under the sand for some reason. We were at a conference and I ran into it and I Sprained my ankle and the thing was all swelling up and he goes, okay, watch my fingers.

Will Steel [00:23:29]:
And it touched it to get me present to what’s actually going on and feel the feelings. And then I had to talk to my ankle. He’s go, hello, ankle. Hello, Will. You know, I had to then speak for my ankle to get what the hell was going on and my, and, and that ankle getting. Cause it was, it was that we were in the middle of actually rebranding as an enterprise that I was working for and I was not. Fuck. I didn’t want to do it.

Will Steel [00:23:55]:
I didn’t want to do all this stuff. I was happy with where we were before. Why are we changing it? So this was my getting a sprained ankle. The communication was, I don’t want to do, I don’t want to move forward with this. You know, I’m putting the brakes on, you know, and it comes out physically. So it’s interesting. What, what, you know, when you said

Nick Urban [00:24:15]:
that and would you say that like, that kind of thing has helped you in other times as well? Like I’ve heard of like if you have a phantom, not phantom pain, but like a pain that doesn’t have a clear origin. Like say you have a. Your low back is sore for no apparent reason, like you didn’t do something that was an acute injury and acute stressor and all of a sudden starts hurting that might have some kind of like emotional, like other layer, other cause. Are you finding that you see that commonly with your, your clients and also like speaking to that body part and like role playing both sides is helpful?

Will Steel [00:24:46]:
Well, it depends what’s showing up. Which, what, which, which tact I’m going to take. If I’m working with someone myself. I have a, a client, a really good friend, and also he’s also my business partner in the Middle east, right. And his whole thing is that all illness is as a result of an imbalance in the emotions, right? So. And he has a way to like color charts and people look at it and he’ll tell them from the state of their emotions what their problem is, where it is, and what’s the conversation to fix it, right. So I start leading. He asked me if I’d create a leadership program in the Middle East.

Will Steel [00:25:25]:
So I created a leadership program. I went out, I’ve been leading it. In fact, I’m going out in two weeks to lead another one in Egypt, in Cairo. And I say, okay, you say all illness is a result of imbalance in the emotions. This work that I do is how the emotions got imbalanced in the first. Imbalanced in the first place. Know, if I decided, you know, I’m. I don’t know, I don’t know.

Will Steel [00:25:56]:
Let’s say I decide I’m ugly, right. And I start hating my nose, for example, I’ve got quite a big nose and. But if I, if I got in that, I might have a nose problem, you know, respiratory problem or, or sinus problems or, or whatever. But there’s a moment in time when that got decided, something happened and you made that decision now. Now if you can get all the way back to the source of that, then all the work he’s doing, you’re not only fixing the imbalance in the emotions, you’re getting to the source of the imbalance. So it’s like you get it because if you don’t do that. And the analogy I said to him, if you don’t do that, it’s like you’re cleaning a wound, but you just leave a little bit in there and you stitch it up, how’s that going to go? It’s not going to heal it for. I mean, what it’s doing is.

Will Steel [00:26:48]:
I say my opinion, my opinion. What he’s doing is way better than a lot of Western medicine, which is just, just giving you stuff to treat symptoms. Well, that’s obviously not getting to the source of the issue. You’re treating the symptoms and you’re giving you medicines and, you know, chemicals and what have you. At least he’s getting to even surgeries. Even surgeries.

Nick Urban [00:27:10]:
There’s like a certain percentage like, of cases in which the surgery doesn’t actually work, it’s ineffective. And so you just had this operation done. It’s a trauma to the body, regardless of how major or minor it is, whenever you’re cutting into it. And then in some cases that can be life saving. In other cases it’s like an elective surgery that may or may not work the way it’s even intended to, or your body notices that there’s been an operation done and then it compensates and it does something else to get back to what it was trying to do to begin with.

Will Steel [00:27:36]:
Yeah. Whereas if you did the work to, you know, sort out the emotions that are imbalanced, which kind of. There’s a really great book, I don’t. You probably read it, but maybe not Right. By Louise Hay a long time ago that came out. You know, I think it’s. I forgot what it’s called. Something like heal your body, heal your life.

Will Steel [00:27:53]:
Right. And she’s got, you know, she’s got phrases that you’ve been saying to yourself. So she’s got a list of all the illnesses that you could possibly, you know, mouth ulcer. Okay. Or, you know, ingrained toenails. I mean, everything. It’s all like listed out. And you go to it and it says, oh, and she’s talking about the conversation that you are.

Will Steel [00:28:15]:
And it’s okay, alter that and do. And she does affirmations. Right. Whereas ontology goes. Actually gets to the bottom of it. You know, it gets to the actual meaning that you’ve added. Want your words, your language. You know, when I first started leading programs and working with people, the thing that was difficult is you want to tell them what it is.

Will Steel [00:28:40]:
Oh, you decided you’re not good enough, and they’ll take it. Oh, yeah, okay. Oh, yeah, I see it. But it’s not really. It’s not all. It’s like. It’s not really it. So you start to learn to say, so what did you decide there? And was it something like, you know, if you want to help them a little bit, you know, is it something like, you know, you’re not really enough.

Will Steel [00:29:01]:
Got enough or something? It’s. Well. And they’ll come out with a precise. Their phrase, what they said in that moment. And, and, and that’s. That’s the healer. That’s what will heal things.

Nick Urban [00:29:14]:
You know, that’s a really important, like reframe, too. It’s not just the awareness of something going on there. It’s in their own words, in their own language. And as the coach or as a good friend who’s helping someone through something, it’s not to just jump in with the perfect perspective. It’s to help them come to that awareness on their own. And it results by asking them more details about that, and then they figure it out. If you just give them a solution, it might help. But you’re not getting all of the fragments out of the splinter out of the wound.

Will Steel [00:29:47]:
That’s right. Well, also, if you tell somebody, you can’t really tell any. This will sound funny, right? You can’t really tell anybody anything. They have to get it themselves. If I tell. Look, I’ve been on lots of courses. Some of them just out of curiosity, you know, like doing my own research. I did a lot of Tony Robbins courses, and not just Tony.

Will Steel [00:30:09]:
A lot of them said, take lots of notes. All your notes, Take all your notes. You know, but if I have to take notes, I’ve just got loads of notes. It hasn’t Altered me. I’m not altered. Coming out of the program. I’ve got lots of notes and lots of information. So I now need to go either study these, implement these, find out more about these, do my own research on all of this stuff versus, you know, there I am and I go, oh, wow.

Will Steel [00:30:37]:
That’s what I decided. Oh, wow. Oh, man. No wonder, you know, no wonder relationships never work out with me. Because I’ve decided, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, you can take all the notes in the world. It’s not going to help you. Once you discover it yourself, you’ve got it. You know, you could give people lots.

Will Steel [00:31:00]:
You could give people books and videos to ride a bicycle. It’s not going to give you balance. No matter how much information you get, no matter how much you understand it and you are clear about it and you can see it and it’s obvious and you know it. You get on that bike and fall off, you gotta. You gotta find it when it balances. Oh, that’s it. And now you got it. And if you go faster, it’s even easier.

Will Steel [00:31:26]:
Oh, wow, look at this. You know, now you’ve got it. And you could not ride a bike for decades. You get on the bike, you’ve got it because you discovered it. So real knowledge that I say makes a difference is when you discover it for yourself. And with this work, you have to discover it yourself because it’s you, nobody else. Nobody else in there making those decisions. You made them.

Will Steel [00:31:48]:
So you got to get the language. Language is important. You know, you’re a linguistic being. You’re also biological, you know, and you’re also, you know. So it’s very important to get the language, to get what you said to yourself in that moment.

Nick Urban [00:32:08]:
Most people will hear that you were an RAF pilot who turned into a coach. And they’ll think that, okay, this is all about mental discipline or toughness. And knowing your background, what was it that you learned about human beings at 25,000ft that you couldn’t have learned anywhere else?

Will Steel [00:32:28]:
The thing that stands out for me that I learned, so let’s see if we can connect it to human beings, because I did recently, is that you know, when any. Whenever anything goes wrong with the airplane. And, you know, mostly that’s simulated when you’re going through training and everything. You know, okay, look down, you’ve got engine fire number, number one, engines on fire. Or, you know, or you’ve got hydraulics have just gone to zero or your artificial horizons gone. You know, what you have to do is Fly the airplane first, you know. Okay, keep it level. All right, good.

Will Steel [00:33:04]:
Get the airplane level. Let’s say you’re throwing around or something. Get the airplane level. Is it safe yet? Good. Now let’s go through the drill to put the engine fire out. Because if you start going into. Oh, it’s engine fire. Let’s do this, this, this, and this and this.

Will Steel [00:33:17]:
And you fly into a hillside. It’s no use to you. So I had it drummed into me. Drummed into me. Fly the airplane. No matter what, whatever’s going on, fly the airplane first. Right? And that did save me at least once, probably if more than once. But I remember flying into cloud at low level and just roll the wings level, pull 6G out like that, you know, and that.

Will Steel [00:33:43]:
That was the drill. The drill was if you go what they call India mike, which means instrument, met conditions. If you go India mike, low level, wings level, 6G, that’s it, you know. So fly the airplane. Now, how does that relate to dealing with problems and. And situations? So let’s say you’re running a business and you get all upset and everything like that, right? Something happens, you. You gotta fly the airplane. So how do you bring that into.

Will Steel [00:34:17]:
Into that situation? Okay, wait, all right, don’t jump around all over. Let’s just deal with this problem. Let’s deal with what’s happening. You know, if you’re in a relationship and you have an argument or you find yourself all of a sudden, there’s an argument going on, what’s happening? Why are we in an argument? Okay, hold on. I’m not going to react. I’m not going to respond to what’s going on. I’m just first going to get. Wait, what’s.

Will Steel [00:34:41]:
What. What’s happening, you know, and get what’s going on. Right? You gotta get. You gotta get things to be simple. I mean, if we jump in and we’re all over the place, it’s not, you know, So I think that’s one thing flying airplanes helped me with. Helped me to. To be able to think whilst, you know, life’s coming at you. There’s a lot of pressures, a lot of demand on you, right? To be able to.

Will Steel [00:35:09]:
In the middle of all that demand, you’ve got producers to be able to still think, you know, keep the horizon level. Okay, what’s happening now? Okay, got it. Where’s the. Okay, fuel? Okay, But. But, you know, when, if it. I don’t know. There’s. When I was training to lead programs, you know, I’d have a structure Maybe one or two instructors at the back.

Will Steel [00:35:34]:
I’d have the participant that’s I’m working with, and I have other people in the audience might be trying to chip in. And you gotta manage that whole situation. It could get. It could get a bit outta hand, right? Keep it calm. Wait, what? No, no, wait. Just say that again and get back to the person, you know. And I’m trying to think of a good example of that. I’ll give you a good example.

Will Steel [00:35:58]:
So I was in Morocco, and I’m being translated. So I got headphone, full headset on like this. I got the microphone. The participants have got headsets, right? So when I speak in English, it gets translated for them into Arabic. When they speak in Arabic, it gets translated for me via interpreters, which were actually in Cairo. It was a different country. Interpreted. Now, there’s a point where the Moroccan accent, the dialect, the person speaking, the interpreter said, not translating it correctly.

Will Steel [00:36:29]:
So I’ve got my business partner now speaking to him at headsets. At this moment, where my head’s lit. I’ve got the translator speaking, I’ve got my business partner speaking. There was some fault with it because my microphone was coming through the headset and the participant. So all these voices all talking at once in my head, and I’m coaching a participant who stood up there at the microphone, right? And I could have gone, this is screw. And then Internet’s dropping in and out, you know, it’s like, oh, man, it’s like I could go crazy in this situation. They go, no, no, no. It’s like fly the airplane.

Will Steel [00:37:03]:
Okay, what is the. And the equivalent of the horizon is what are we up to here? And what I’ve created for this work in the Middle east is transforming the leadership of the Middle East. So it’s like, wait, what we’re up to here is transforming the leadership in the Middle East. And right now, this is what it looks like to be transforming the leadership of the Middle East. Okay, so who I need to be right now, I need to be calm and patient, tell everybody what’s going on. Okay, everyone, hold on a minute. I got this headset. I’ve got this voice.

Will Steel [00:37:31]:
I’ve got that voice. So wait, so can you say again what you just said to the participant? Right? And in the middle of that chaos, be able to bring a kind of clarity and what’s important and what we’re actually dealing with. What we’re actually dealing with is this person and their life and what they’re dealing with. So I would say the pilot Training allowed for to be able to deal with all those different multiple inputs. But it’s not like I’m multitasking. I can’t multitask. I don’t multitask. Here’s what.

Will Steel [00:38:03]:
With an airplane, you look at the horizon and then you go and check the height and then you come back to the horizon. Then you go and check the speed, and then you come back to the horizon. Then you check the vertical speed, you come back to the horizon, then you go to the heading and you come back to the horizon. Then you go to the flight path and you come back to the horizon. So it looks like you’re multitasking, but you’re actually keeping your eye on the horizon, flying the airplane. Check this, fly an airplane now check that, you know, so that’s as close as I can get to answering your question at this moment.

Nick Urban [00:38:34]:
For people who are in less high stakes situation, perhaps the stakes are a little bit lower. How do you recommend they can train that ability to stay calm under pressure? I’m not sure if you guys had some kind of secret technology that you’re using or it was a lot more simple, but either way, everyone experiences pressure to some degree on a regular basis. And the ability to stay calm and to remember the fundamentals, to notice what’s

Will Steel [00:38:58]:
going on, it’s invaluable in that kind of scenario. What you’re talking about now, what I do, if I find that’s happening, if I find I’m getting agitated like that, I go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on, hold on a minute, hold on a minute. What are the facts here? What are the actual facts? See if you can get the facts to be the facts and all of a sudden all the extra stuff kind of dies away. Let’s say you’re getting panicked about your finances, right? And that’s happened to me, you know, I’ve got, I’ve got investments, I’ve got different bank accounts, I’ve got money coming in from clients over here. I’ve got money going out for stuff. So all this stuff going on, right? And I’m like, oh man, I don’t know if it’s all working or stop. Okay, let’s get the facts, okay, what are the facts? And get them all and find out all the different things until I’ve got the whole facts and okay, so that’s the situation.

Will Steel [00:39:52]:
All right, I’m okay, that’s okay. All right, great. So you basically break it down to black and white, get things to be black and white, take all The I’m screwed. Take all the you don’t love me. Take all the you’re not respecting me. You take all the extra stuff we’re adding away to get things to be black and white. To get things as much as you can, right? To get things to be just, you know, get the table to be the table.

Nick Urban [00:40:19]:
That reminds me of something else I saw when I was browsing through your LinkedIn. And that is when it comes to coaching, the authority doesn’t come from just adding and stacking more on top. It comes from actually subtracting. Have you seen that? That is a big part of your coaching program to get people the best possible results.

Will Steel [00:40:39]:
I’ve had people come to me for coaching and say, okay, what you got for me? And I’m like, what have I got for you? I’m not here to bring you anything. I’m here to coach you in what you want to accomplish. But what’s the deliverables in your coaching? Well, what is it you want to accomplish? That’s my deliverable. My deliverable is you accomplish that. And beyond that. I had a guy who, turns out he’s got an aspiration. He wants to be the prime minister of his country. Obviously, I’m not going to say what country it is.

Will Steel [00:41:10]:
And he’s about two steps away from it, right? He asked me, you know, he goes, can we break down the skills you’re going to have to teach me and the this and the that. I said, I can’t do that. I have no idea right now. I have no idea. I don’t know what I’m going to be dealing with with you. Because it. There’s whatever situations arising on your journey to accomplishing what you’re out to accomplish. You know, the best coaching I ever got was, which I didn’t like when I got it, but when it comes to, you know, building businesses, when it comes to creating something new, you know, I asked Werner Earhart, who created the S training and all the forum stuff, I said, how do you come up with all this, man? You got, like all these people working for you, all these offices all around the world, all these things happening all at the same time.

Will Steel [00:42:07]:
I mean, how did you create all that? He goes, I don’t know. So what do you mean you don’t know you did it? I don’t know. Well, how do you do it? He says, I don’t know. You just start. I’m like, what? I wanted something else. I didn’t want. You just start. But it’s the best coaching you start, you make a mistake, you correct it, you find out that’s not the way to do it.

Will Steel [00:42:33]:
You do it like this. Oh, that worked. Let’s do more of that. You know, you start and you get better at the bits you need to get better at, and you learn what you need to learn, or you get people to come in or experts in this and you pay them to do that, and you just start and the things, you know, grows as you progress. So, yeah, so like that.

Nick Urban [00:42:58]:
But when you’re coaching people, are you saying that oftentimes they come in wanting to add a bunch of things, a bunch of new skills, and then instead you’re actually saying, you know what? You’re already doing a lot of different things, and perhaps what is going to be most effective, most relevant for you, is to pare down. Because that’s a huge issue in the health industry in general, is just adding more supplements, adding more protocols, and all of a sudden you’re taking 90 different things. You’re spending four hours in your morning routine, four hours in your evening routine, and you barely have any life left for the rest.

Will Steel [00:43:28]:
Yeah, I have to look at everything with what’s actually happening, right? I say, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. So what’s the actual thing you’re dealing with here? Right? And it might be just, they’re hypochondriac and they don’t want to get sick about. With anything that they’ve heard about, and so they’re taking all these supplements. All right, good. Or they, you know, what you’re dealing with is I have, you know, a lack of energy or. Or what I’m dealing with is I don’t digest very well. Okay, well, let’s just. Let’s just focus on that one thing and see if we can go to the main thing that you’re dealing with.

Will Steel [00:44:04]:
And let’s just see if we can handle that. Right? I mean, I’m not. I’m not a. I’m not a doctor. Do you know what I mean? I’m not a health professional. I’m not doing that. But in that kind of world, got to get to. I always like to get to the source of things, which is hard if you’ve got all these different things.

Will Steel [00:44:23]:
So you’ve got to get to, like, what’s the main thing? And then let’s get to the source of that, like, what’s actually going on? Where’s that coming from? I said, people want answers, right? They want a quick answer, and they go, oh, yeah, great, I’ve got it. Now, but it just doesn’t work that way. That’s like those notes in those programs, taking lots of notes. No, like, let’s look at what you’re trying to accomplish and let’s look at what’s in the way, what’s holding you back or what’s having. You not just start. Because, you know, remember the coaching is you just start. So what’s happening? You not just start. If you start and you’re failing and you, you, you try this and it didn’t work.

Will Steel [00:45:01]:
Okay, well, let’s have a look. Let’s see. What is it about that that’s not working? You know, so you deal with what’s there. I’m not, you know, we’ve got enough going on and enough inputs from society and social media and our best friend and all of this stuff. No, let’s just get it simple. What is it you’re actually dealing with and what’s going to move you forward this week? Between this week and next week, what actions can you take to move things forward? Oh, I could do this, this and this. Great. That’s it.

Will Steel [00:45:29]:
See you next week.

Nick Urban [00:45:30]:
With that, though, are you often talking them down? You listed 10 things right there, for example. But perhaps maybe you should only focus on these three and make sure you do them and get them done at a high level instead of trying to spread yourself thin across 10 or 20 different things.

Will Steel [00:45:44]:
Yeah, and the way I would language, that would be. Okay, what are the top, let’s say, what are the top three things there that you’d need to focus on that are going to make the biggest difference? And if you got those complete, then, you know, it does move everything forward. If you’ve got time, you can start doing the other ones. But what are the top three? So those are the priority. Once you got that done, then you can look at the others. Those are niceties. If you got those done, great. But these are ones you’re actually promising you’re going to actually do this week.

Will Steel [00:46:12]:
You know, so I work week to

Nick Urban [00:46:14]:
week with people you’ve coached everyone from CEOs to aspiring prime ministers to Tibetan monks to world champion athletes. What does a Tibetan monk need coaching on? And is it fundamentally different from what a CEO and aspiring prime minister needs coaching on? Or is it the same thing, just dressed differently?

Will Steel [00:46:35]:
It’s always different things for different people. Okay, so a CEO in Boston, Massachusetts, you know, dealing with what they’re actually dealing with in their actual company and the setup of that company and now it’s, it’s, you know, structured is dealing with different things to a CEO in Philadelphia, you know, who’s maybe a similar company, but, you know, they got different dynamics and. And stuff. So. So what does a Tibetan monk. Well, I had a. I had a. Actually, I don’t know if it wasn’t Tibetan.

Will Steel [00:47:09]:
He was a monk, though. He was a Buddhist monk. I had about three of them in this program that I led in Thailand, in Bangkok. And it was the final night where they bring all the friends and family because they want them to do the program as well, right? So they can sign up as well, part of the evening. And one of the guests go up and say, look, I’ve got Buddhism. Why do I need this program? Why do I need to transform myself? I mean, I’ve got Buddhism. I don’t need this. I said, well, why don’t we ask one of these monks here? Because they’ve done this work and they’re here.

Will Steel [00:47:42]:
So I got the monk up to the microphone. I said, would you mind? You know. He said, oh, yes. He says, you know, as a Buddhist monk, I have to. You know, my job is to spread the word, spread Buddhism. And before I did the program, you know, I didn’t have a lot of confidence. Now I’ve done the program. I’ve written several books, and I coach teenage boys, boys in their lives.

Will Steel [00:48:08]:
I got this big program with all these teenage boys coming in like this, and I. And I. I wouldn’t have done that. Now I’ve done this. I’ve got the confidence to do that. And, you know, I’m being more effective at being a monk, you know, so I’ve had imams as well. Imam is, if you not know, in Muslim, is. Is like the minister, you know, kind of.

Will Steel [00:48:32]:
Right. And they were amazed. I mean, I had this imam in London, and he was from Glasgow. He says. He got up and talked. He said, I spent two days trying to find a fault with you. And then I realized that’s what I do all over my life. I’m always doing that.

Will Steel [00:48:50]:
And I’m supposed to be, you know, holy person, right? He didn’t use those words, but however he said it and, you know, so whoever you are, once you get to the root of what’s going on with you, then you have a choice. Until you are at the root of it, you’re just fighting the symptoms, you know.

Nick Urban [00:49:10]:
Did coaching either the monk or the imam teach you something that changed the way you coach executives?

Will Steel [00:49:18]:
If I look at what, you know, what actually happened in the moment, there’s like a reverence around A religious person, you know, like, I don’t really know their religion, right? So I gotta watch myself. I might, you know, make wrong mistake or something. No, I just gotta let that go and be with the person. Same as if I get a CEO of a huge pharmaceutical company in, in Saudi Arabia. It’s like, okay, it’s a person. What are they actually saying? What, what’s. And listen. You know, most coaching can happen in the listening, but not any old listening, like really listening.

Will Steel [00:50:03]:
See if, if, if, if. And I’ve experienced it the way around. So I’ve had not many, not many coaches. And I’ve had some of the best coaches that there are, you know, supposedly on the planet. But one of the best coach I ever had hardly said a word. He’s like, I’d say, I got this problem, I’m trying to accomplish this. He goes, okay, what else about that? I said, well, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’m waiting for him to say something.

Will Steel [00:50:33]:
He’s just listening. He goes, okay, well, what do you see? I said, well, I’m like trawling from the deep depths of my being to say something. But then what comes out? It’s like, oh, a revelation. You know, I would have conversations and I’d say something. It’s like disappeared. It’s just a black hole of nothingness because they’re just really listening, really present, really with you. And I tried to mimic my style on that more when I’m working with people where I’m really getting what’s going on with you, really are trying to really get what you’re saying and what’s going on in the background. Listening for what? Driving that? What’s the concern in the background now? What’s really going on with you that’s having you say now what you’re saying and be experiencing what you’re experiencing.

Will Steel [00:51:32]:
I’m really listening. So they’ll say something at some point and it’ll just. I can hear it, you know, I. I coached a scientist and he wasn’t charging enough for what he was doing. And he was working all these hours. He had 70 people that he was working with. You know, it’s like it was a fitness, not fitness, a weight loss guy. People would lose a hundred pounds, 200 pounds with him.

Will Steel [00:52:00]:
He’s like these grossly overweight people would come to him and again, he put him in his system as long as it stayed with him and did what he told. They lost all the weight and they didn’t put it back on because he reset their microbiomes and all of that amazing stuff. And he’s charging like peanuts, and he’s got all these people and he can’t keep up. He’s like, no, it’s not sleeping. Very, I mean, very kind of unhealthy, himself getting that way, right for the. With the stress. And I. I said, and he was charging like, I think about $600 for first session.

Will Steel [00:52:31]:
Then it dropped to $300 a month. I said, why are you charging 2,000, 5,000 for this? You’re working with top CEOs, you know, company owners and people like that. They were vastly overweight because, well, it’s easy for me, you know, I don’t want to manipulate people and stuff. And it went on and explained and all that. And I came back. So wait, wait. He said, manipulate? Have you experienced being manipulated or seen other people manipulating other people? He goes, oh, yeah, man, all the time. I said, really? See, I picked up on one word because somehow if you really listen, you’ll hear it right.

Will Steel [00:53:10]:
You’ll hear there’s some weight around that word. And it said, oh, yeah, I got two professors together, we formed the business, and then they scarp it off and stole all the stuff and just left me. And I’m the one who set it up. They just manipulated me. I said, okay. And he was kind of upset about that, annoyed about that. I said, look, right now, how you feel right now. What does that remind you of? Go back right into your childhood.

Will Steel [00:53:34]:
What does that remind you of? Oh, wow. Well, this thing happened when I was 11. My godfather, I adored him. It was. Worshiped him. And one day he sat me down, he put some stuff on, and it was inappropriate. And. And I.

Will Steel [00:53:48]:
And he did some things to me and I felt really weird. And then he gave me some money, and he always gave me money, but this time when he gave me the money, I was like. I said, right. What did you decide right there? Well, something’s wrong with me. It’s my fault. I’m weird. And no one’s going to own me with money. No one’s going to own me, okay? Now, if you look, how’s that played out in your life? I mean, oh, man, I’ve gone and worked in these corporations and they start throwing big checks at me and bonuses, and the moment they do that, I feel all uncomfortable and I leave because no one’s going to own me.

Will Steel [00:54:30]:
I go, well, is it true what you decided? If you look at all that? He goes, no, it’s not true. It’s just that happened. It’s not about Me, I mean, it’s not. I mean, I was 11, not me. You know, kind of unraveled it all because he’d done some of this work previously and like that, it’s. It was fast. But immediately he put his price up to 2,000amonth and trained one of his guys to take all these other people. So he cut his hours down to next to nothing.

Will Steel [00:54:58]:
And his is what he’s earning just went through the roof, you know, But I wasn’t attacking it from what he needed to do with the customers and the finances and the. I didn’t go there. I’m listening, and I’m trained to listen a certain way that I will hear something. And we take it all the way back. We get back to that little thing where it all started. And once you get yourself back there and you see it for what it is, it’s like a domino effect. It goes through your life. And now you’ve got power right now in these situations that you haven’t had power in.

Will Steel [00:55:33]:
It’s not me. I didn’t even, you know, I’ve got trained in this way of looking at and thinking and, you know, approaching it. And I’ve picked things up along the way myself and, you know, getting coached by that guy that really, really listened. That’s where I emulate most of my coaching.

Nick Urban [00:55:48]:
That’s invaluable in itself because the idea of coaching in general, at least as it’s popularly portrayed, is that you come to a coach, they listen to you for a few minutes, then they just give you essentially a prescription. They give you. They. A prescription that solves all your problems, and then if you have an excuse, they push back on it and they help you get to the bottom of your excuse, et cetera, et ce. But a lot of the best coaches that I’ve talked to, that I’ve worked with, and that as coaches evolve, at some point, a lot of the good ones realize that instead of doing all the talking and the prescriptions listen. And listening sounds really easy. If you tell someone, oh, yeah, I get paid and I just pretty much listen to someone. And then I, like, find the one little thing, the one domino.

Nick Urban [00:56:33]:
I push that over and it changes their life permanently for the better. It’s. It seems like the world’s easiest job, even though it. It’s not. Do you get that a lot? Like, come on, all I’m doing is just. All you’re doing is just listening to what I’m saying. You barely even say anything.

Will Steel [00:56:50]:
Well, no, that’s part of it. I Mean, there is some. There’s some creativity also, you know, I mean, for me, it seems obvious, right? You know, I discovered I’m very good at creating new avenues for solutions and for business ideas like that. I had an art dealer, and he came to me and said, I haven’t sold a piece of art for three months. I’m like, really in trouble here. You know, this is ridiculous. You know, it was a pandemic. He said, everyone’s hanging on to the art.

Will Steel [00:57:20]:
Nobody’s selling it because art’s the one thing that’s going to go up in value or always does. It very rarely goes down in value. And over time, it always goes up, right? So everyone’s hanging on to their art. Now, he’s pretty unique. He only sold art for one artist, which was his father. And his father was like the oldest living, prolific artist still alive, right? I won’t tell you who he is, right? But he said, I haven’t sold anything. I said, well, how many paintings did he do? He did also sculptures, but how many paintings did he paint? He goes, well, we’ve got the catalog. We know where everything is.

Will Steel [00:57:55]:
We know where all the. Every piece is in whose exhibition it’s in or whose private collection it’s in. Like, where is it? I said, really? I said, and how many are there? He goes, well, we’ve got 2,500 in the catalog. I said, yeah, but that’s not what. I asked. How many paintings did he paint? He said, we think about 5,000. I said, well, where’s the other two and a half thousand? He goes, oh, well, you know, in his 30s and 40s, like Venezuela. And he’d paint these and just sell them as it goes.

Will Steel [00:58:23]:
He didn’t keep track of who he sold them to. I’m like, jesus, I’m going to Venezuela. I’m going to buy one. I’m going to find these things. They’re worth a million dollars each. He goes, no, no, don’t go there. It’s really dangerous, you know, you’ll get. You’ll get hijacked and kidnapped from between the airport and your hotel.

Will Steel [00:58:38]:
Don’t go there. You can’t go there. I said, okay, well, can you put an advert out or something? Or, you know, you’ve got all these. Can you do something? I said, look, if someone comes to me with one of these paintings, even if you’re not the owner, but you’re connected with the owner, and we verify it as one of his paintings and it goes to auction, we’ll give you a Percentage, let’s say we’ll give you 5% or 3% of the price. How about that as an idea? He goes, oh yeah, that’s pretty good. I’ll give it to my team. He came back six weeks later, he said, do you know how much I’ve made since, since I implemented that? I said, no. He said $17 million.

Will Steel [00:59:13]:
In six weeks he made $17 million. So I mean, that’s an extreme example, right? But if you are not in it with them and you’re outside, you can think, you ask questions that for you are like, why is he doing that? And they go, well, no one’s ever asked why, we just do, you know, so you’ve got a perspective as a coach. You’re outside their performance. So you ask curious questions and sometimes those questions reveal a blind spot, you know, something they haven’t been able to see. And that’s where oftentimes, you know, the breakthroughs happen.

Nick Urban [00:59:54]:
Yeah, you can’t guarantee you’re going to get it every session. But in general, my favorite so called biohacks are the things that you do one time. You fix your light environment, you upgrade your water filtration, you fix your sleeping situation, all that kind of stuff. And, and then it compounds in the background. Day in, day out, no extra work for you. You just get it set up and then you enjoy the fruits of that. Would you say that coaching, because you can get those life changing decisions and moments, is the ultimate biohack?

Will Steel [01:00:24]:
Yeah. And I’ve always had a coach, right? At one point I had three coaches, right? And sometimes I’ve had a break from having a coach. But one thing having a coach does forces you to be accountable for what you’re up to and what you’re trying to accomplish. Like, because sometimes you’re not accomplishing anything, you’re just kind of going through life, you know, you’re just kind of rolling up and doing what you do and doing the same again the next day and the next day. And then, you know, you kind of, you’re not going anywhere, you know, you’re not trying to get anywhere, you’re not up to anything. So one of the things about having a coach, if you’re a good coach is, you know, you’ll lay out what you’re out to accomplish and it’ll always be inside of, okay, what are we up to here? What are we trying to accomplish here? What are you trying to accomplish? Okay, what have you tried? What actions have you taken? See, if there’s no actions happening, then nothing’s Happening. So, you know, it’s proactive. You’ve got to be moving things forward.

Will Steel [01:01:26]:
You’ve got to be taking actions all the time. And if that’s all you did, you had somebody you could promise you’re gonna take actions to, and then you account for the actions that you actually did do it. How many people would that move forward? You know, and then there’s the way that you organize yourself, you know, so there’s some training there. So there’s coaching and there’s training. Right. So training is. You’re actually training somebody. And quite often, I’m training people in organizing themselves.

Will Steel [01:01:56]:
Having a calendar, putting things in the calendar, doing what’s in the calendar when it says to do it in the calendar. Right, Doing. That’s what I’m doing right now. Why? Because that’s what’s in my calendar. You know, I’ve been training that for years and years and years. So for me, it’s like, you know, I still have to fight with myself to do my exercises at the time. It’s in my calendar because I don’t want to and I don’t feel like it, but it’s in my calendars. I gotta.

Will Steel [01:02:21]:
I’ve gotta. You know, I gotta walk the talk. So is it the ultimate biohack? It’s definitely a smart move if you want to produce results ongoingly, if you want to be held accountable for accomplishing what you say you’re out to accomplish, or even creating what you’re out to accomplish. Maybe you’ve never actually created it really, or you’re out or kept it alive. You know, you create it once and then forget it. Create it and keep it alive. You know, if you come to the coach every week, say, oh, okay, what. Let’s just get straight.

Will Steel [01:02:57]:
What is it we’re up to accomplish or we have to accomplish this. All right, great. You know, I’m building this business to blah, blah, blah, you know, all right, that’s what we’re able to accomplish. That gives us our framework for thinking, our framework for looking at solutions to the problems we’ve got in front of us or dealing with the breakdowns we’ve got. It’s ongoing. If you’re running a business, if you’re living a life where you’re up to stuff, there’s always things happening, you know, so having a coach is a. You’re giving yourself support, you know, to really actually accomplish what you’re out to accomplish.

Nick Urban [01:03:33]:
Well, will, to keep our calendar appointment for this episode. We’ll start to wind this one down. If people want to connect with you, to work with you, or to pick up your book, Free to lead. First of all, what will they get in the book? Free to lead. And then where can they go about all of that?

Will Steel [01:03:50]:
Yeah, okay, well, you know, you can always reach out to me on willsteel.com all one word, steal without an e at the end. It’s S t w l willsteel.com now if you want to find out about the book, it’s willsteel.com forward/, free to lead. And then you’ll get to the book page. So the book is, by the way, if you go to my website, you can, you can connect with me, you can connect with me on LinkedIn as well. Like that. And the book, what’s it about? It’s about, it’s in two parts. So the first part is identifying all these different ways that you’re on automatic, all these different reactions, automatics, self sabotage mechanisms. But fundamentally they’re all coming from, pretty much all coming from limiting beliefs or limiting behaviors that you’ve just ended up with, you know, so the first part of the book is getting all the way, not that.

Will Steel [01:04:50]:
So when you’re not that, you’re free to create. And the second part of the book is creating your leadership as authentically an expression of your real self, you, true self, you. And the second part is creating authentic leadership. We talk about vision, talk about integrity, you know, stuff you need to empower others. So you’re producing what you want to produce. And we talk about, I know we’re winding down, but we talk about fitra. Because in the middle East I found this word which is brilliant. It doesn’t translate directly into English, but it’s really awesome.

Will Steel [01:05:23]:
Fitra in Islam is like your true essence. It’s what God breathed into Adam. But it’s also if you put a seed in soil, it knows to grow into a perfect plant, that’s fitra. You can put the seed in a different soil, different environment. It grows up perfectly and it grows in harmony with the environment it finds itself. That’s also fitra. So as a leader, you can be in any environment, in any situation. You know, being able to be your true self in that is what the book’s about, being free, free of all these constraints, to be fully your true self and lead from there and live from there.

Will Steel [01:06:01]:
It’s not just for leaders at all.

Nick Urban [01:06:03]:
Yeah, exactly. I love the reframing of leadership. Not just being for the C suite or for managers in large organizations, but leadership can enable us to live our best possible lives.

Will Steel [01:06:14]:
You can provide leadership when you’re in a group of friends and you’re out and something needs sorting out rather than just going along with the crowd, you can go, wait, wait, wait. We need to handle this, guys. Let’s do this, this and this. Or why don’t you? Who can do this and who can do that? Like you? You can be the lowest rung on the ladder and provide leadership whatever situation in your family, in your community, you know, and at work. You don’t have to be the boss to provide leadership. You can provide leadership right there in that meeting by stopping and dealing with what needs to get dealt with.

Nick Urban [01:06:44]:
Thank you for joining the podcast. I’ll put a link to everything we’ve discussed in the show. Notes for this episode Any final words? Any final takeaways for people who’ve made it this far?

Will Steel [01:06:53]:
Yeah, just keep separating out what’s actually happening from everything you’re adding to it. The meaning you’re giving it, the interpretation you’re coming up with. Just gotta keep. Whoa, whoa, wait, wait. What’s actually happening? Is this because it’s simple? Life is simple when you deal with what’s actually happening.

Nick Urban [01:07:11]:
Perfect. Great note to end it on. Thanks again, Will. Bye everybody.

Will Steel [01:07:16]:
Thanks Nick. Thanks for having me on the show.

Nick Urban [01:07:18]:
Thanks for tuning in to high performance longevity. If you got value today, the best way to support the show is to leave a review or share it with someone who’s ready to upgrade their healthspan. You can find all the episodes, show notes and resources mentioned at outliyr.com until next time, stay energized, stay bioharmonized, and be an outlier.